Sexual Revolution Hurt Girls — Bari Weiss has published on Substack a piece by Louise Perry about how the sexual revolution has harmed her generation. Ms. Perry is 30.
“Remove the progressive goggles, and the history of the last 60 years looks different. The sexual revolution isn’t only a story of women freed from the burdens of chastity and motherhood. It is also a story about the triumph of the playboy,” she says.
“The new sexual culture isn’t so much about the liberation of women, as so many feminists would have us believe, but the adaptation of women to the expectations of a familiar character: Don Juan, Casanova, or, more recently, Hugh Hefner,” she says.
“I think young women have been utterly failed by liberal feminism and have the most to gain from a swing back against its excesses,” she says.
Writing those things in 1985 would have put her squarely in the mainstream of the Moral Majority.
Maybe good things are happening.
Here is Ms. Perry’s advice for young women.
• Distrust any person or ideology that pressures you to ignore your moral intuition.
• Chivalry is actually a good thing. We all have to control our sexual desires, and men particularly so, given their greater physical strength and average higher sex drives.
• Sometimes (though not always) you can readily spot sexually aggressive men. There are a handful of personality traits that are common to them: impulsivity, promiscuity, hyper-masculinity and disagreeableness. These traits in combination should put you on your guard.
• A man who is aroused by violence is a man to steer well clear of, whether or not he uses the vocabulary of BDSM to excuse his behavior. If he can maintain an erection while beating a woman, he isn’t safe to be alone with.
• Consent workshops are mostly useless. The best way of reducing the incidence of rape is by reducing the opportunities for would-be rapists to offend. This can be done either by keeping convicted rapists in prison or by limiting their access to potential victims.
• The category of people most likely to become victims of these men are young women between the ages of 13 and 25. All girls and women, but particularly those in this age category, should avoid being alone with men they don’t know or men who give them the creeps. Gut instinct is not to be ignored: It’s usually triggered by a red flag that’s well worth noticing.
• Get drunk or high in private and with female friends, rather than in public or in mixed company.
• Don’t use dating apps. They offer a large pool of options, but at a severe cost. It is far better to meet a partner through mutual friends, since they can vet histories and punish bad behavior. Dating apps can’t.
• Holding off on having sex with a new boyfriend for at least a few months is a good way of discovering whether or not he’s serious about you or just looking for a hook-up.
• Only have sex with a man if you think he would make a good father to your children—not because you necessarily intend to have children with him, but because this is a good rule of thumb in deciding whether he’s worthy of your trust.
• Monogamous marriage is by far the most stable and reliable foundation on which to build a family.
The entire article can be found here. The comments are worth reading too.
Sexual Revolution Hurt Girls
Louise Perry is absolutely right. About everything. I was a child when the sexual revolution began. I was looking forward to wearing my first bra. By the time I was 18, I had discarded it completely. That was during the “Bra Burning Phase.”
I am more than twice Ms. Perry’s age. It took a decade or more before I came to my senses, during which time I was trying to act “cool” but never really understood what these women were fighting for. It is sad that we have gone so far. I fear we can never go back to the way things were when I was a child. Too much water under the bridge, or maybe the bridge is just completely wiped out.
The sexual revolution hurt humanity. Humanity as in humankind collectively as well as every individual’s personal humanity.
As a Gen X I’ve often made the point that my generation learned the worst lessons of the Boomers. What is happening in the nation rests squarely on my generation’s shoulders.
What one generation tolerates the next accepts.